David Davis, the former Tory leadership contender, has called for a return to
grammar schools in a challenge to the policy of David Cameron.

David Davis said top jobs are 'dominated by public school boys'.

By Alastair Jamieson

8:38AM BST 24 Jun 2009

The one-time shadow home secretary said only a return to selective education could “rescue the next generation of the underprivileged”.

The Haltemprice and Howden MP, who attended a grammar school, unlike Old Etonian Mr Cameron, said the only winners from the abolition of grammar schools had been public school boys.

His comments, made at a debate on Tuesday night and reported in the Daily Mail, could reopen Conservative party wounds over the issue which saw a rebellion of right-wing MPs early in Mr Cameron’s leadership.

The Tory leader has insisted there will be no return to the ’11-plus’ system and in 2007 said he was “determined to move on from a sterile debate about building a few more grammar schools”.

In his first serious challenge to Mr Cameron since quitting the shadow cabinet in 2008 to highlight his beliefs on civil liberties, Mr Davis described grammar schools as “the greatest instrument for social mobility ever invented”.

“Every chance I had was created by that grammar school,” he said. “And that is what grammar schools have done for hundreds of thousands of children from poor homes, council estates, even broken homes, through the postwar years.

“The charge against the grammar school is that they helped the brightest at the expense of the weaker child. The truth about the comprehensive system is that it failed the best without helping the weak.”

He continued: "Today we are witnessing the results of a failed revolution, where egalitarians abolished grammar schools to level opportunity in our society, and accidentally destroyed the chances of the very people they were trying to help.

“They punished the bright poor kids who were held back. They handicapped the intellectual capacity of the country. And out of this catastrophe there was only one winning group. Do you know who they were?

“Yes, the public schools. Who teach just 7 per cent of the population. The media, the law, business – they are all dominated by public school boys.”

Mr Davis told the Daily Mail he was also planning to speak out on other issues, such as the need for public spending cuts.